Nepal yesterday (7 January) announced plans to add a third gender category to passports, following a 2007 Supreme Court ruling recognizing third gender.

‘We have changed the passport regulations and will add a third category of gender for those people who do not want to be identified as male or female,’ Lok Bahadur Thapa, chief of the government’s passport department, told Reuters.

Nepal joins a handful of countries that recognize a third gender on official documents, including India. Australian and New Zealand nationals can choose from three genders on passports – male, female or indeterminate, marked by an ‘x.’